Breathless to Sea
by MissAnnThropic
Summary: I could only pray to your god, hoping him merciful enough to hear my most pained and desired cry, that I go before you do. Pray I don’t have to live a single minute without you.


Title: Breathless to Sea  
Author: MissAnnThropic  
Summary: I could only pray to your god, hoping him merciful enough to hear my most pained and desired cry, that I go before you do. Pray I don't have to live a single minute without you.  
Disclaimer: I own nasing! Really, I don't. All you see here (that you recognize, anyway) is the creation of someone else. I take no credit.

* * *

I may not understand your love of the sea. I'll be the first to admit that to me, it is not a living entity as it is to you... not a creature which is to be revered. I know you do, though.

I know your father taught you that the ocean is a harsh mistress, but one that can be waxed and waned... seduced into cooperation, a tireless force that can be coerced into carrying you to safety rather than fight you with its claws and gnashing teeth. I may not share your feelings for the ocean... but I do understand that you live under two gods. There is the god of your mother... the Catholic father of Jesus Christ taught in the doctrines of Christianity... the one whose emblem you wear emblazoned on your neck so faithfully. The god who turns your eyes heavenward. Your other god is that of your father... the worship of the waters, a respect for the depths of the ocean that I could no sooner fathom than tame. In a way, a god whose legacy you carry in your eyes... the blue of its divinity... the admiration in your stare as you seek its domain past the coast. A god who casts your eyes below you, in no less reverence than for the one above.

In a way, I envy your polytheism, though I doubt you would admit that you revere the sea as a deity. In your system of faith, you are covered on all sides by your gods. My gods are elusive, often hiding in the shadows... more often falling short of being actual gods to me. Your gods cradle you... from above and below... never could you be without your divine powers. You could no sooner be away from both the sea and the sky than you could will your heart to stop beating.

I may not share any of this with you... my gods were taken from me before I could at first believe... losing Samantha when I was young tore from me blind faith... the kind of faith you must have inside you to let you believe in these divine forces at work over your head and under your feet. Though I may not acknowledge your gods, I see your faith in them.

I would not think of trying to take these protectors from you. They are something you feel will always protect you... cradle you in comforting embraces. Let them... let you believe they will. In our line of work, what right do I have to ever take from you anything that might bring you comfort on such cold and dark nights? My quest may have to be in the dark, but that does not mean I cannot allot you your lanterns to light your way. In a way, I'd too like to believe in what you do. I do not wish them for myself understand, but I wish them true for you. What I wouldn't give up to see you under the watchful eye and care of a greater power such as the ones you believe in... one that could protect you far better than I. I wish the touch of God could come down and save you... there is no reason I should pull you down with me, should I ever find myself falling. I would rejoice to know there was someone waiting to pull you back, though I may stumble and fall.

You had a perfect family as a child... a mother and a father in whom you could place perfect trust. I had none of these, and yet not for a second would I begrudge the greater mother and father who you have adopted... or perhaps they have adopted you in addition to what you have had on this earth. The powerful father in the skies and the invincible mother in the waves. It seems even the gods fight over custody of you... if I felt I were any match, I would face them down for rights to you, as well. Maybe that is really what God, if he existed, feels like... the way I feel when I know that for once I CAN protect you... that I can stop you from being hurt.

But I know that, in the larger scheme, I could never compare to your gods. They are flawless in your eyes... I am but a mere mortal. I have dings and niches... my armor tarnished and rusted in places. I have weak spots... you are able to see into me like no human would be able to a deity. I am humbled before you, and yet know that you are more than my equal. As if I had a choice in the matter to begin with, I relinquish you to the gods of your faith. We are all putting you on an alter, Scully... they can just ensure you do not fall from glory... fall from grace.

I will never understand how you feel... not fully. To do so I would have to believe... there are no gods for the likes of me. Even the heavens seemed to have been lost to me, giving up on me as I did on them that day in 1973. No angels would turn their eyes my way. They compensated the best they could... they sent me you, and you will look upon me. Half the time, I keep expecting you to vanish... having been too good to be true the entire time.

And so, while I can never embrace what you hold on to in dark hours for personal salvation, I can keep you in the light of your gods. Just because I am shivering and cold in the darkness as all I know and believe is stripped of me and leaves me bare does not mean you have to share my suffering. You have higher parents waiting to hold you... to warm you as my own skin is peeled away... my flesh rent from my bones as you are cradled in the warmth of their divinity. A mother at sea, a father in the heavens... exactly what you deserve.

I feel as if I've made some secret bargain with your father in heaven, though I have never felt close to meeting him... not even so much as to concede he might exist. Still, I feel we have come to an agreement. As long as you remain by my side, my own piece of salvation, my small portion of mercy in an otherwise cruel existence, I am content to be otherwise cast aside by any such greater force. The gods can shun me... with you by my side, I will never truly be without the divine.

However, with this deal with eternity, I know that in the end I will have to part with all that has shed light into my life, all that I have come to cherish in you. Some day I will lose you. I could only pray to your god, hoping him merciful enough to hear my most pained and desired cry, that I go before you do. Pray I don't have to live a single minute without you. I could not bare it, though I hope in my own passing your high mother and father would offer you comfort enough to go on after my death. I have no greater being to brush aside my tears should I lose you. I would rather slip into oblivion before you, once again forgotten by all but you, leaving you in the care of those you revere. I have all but resigned to the fact that, no matter how we are eventually torn asunder, I will be alone.

I have not refused to acknowledge you could well go before me. I'm not so faithful as to believe without doubt that my one prayer has been heard. I don't expect it to be... why would a god I don't believe exists answer a plea such as mine?

I have faced the fact I might look one day upon your body... your lungs no longer drawing breath and your eyes no longer seeing. A heart that stands still in two chests... yours and mine as well.

When you finally pass on, leaving this imperfect mortal coil for what you are so deserving of in the heaven you believe so strongly in, I know that a custody battle of immense proportions will threaten to rip apart the sky and sea... waters and winds shall clash in combat for the right to own you for eternity. Not that I could blame them... I would dash myself upon the waves and throw myself against the winds if I though I stood a chance of one last minute with you.

Your father god in the sky and mother goddess in the ocean depths will no doubt fight long and hard for you. I should not be surprised if the skies darken and the sea, in her fury and frustration, swallows vessels whole.

I know you, Scully. Maybe better than you might think I ever could... maybe better than you know many aspects of yourself. You are a Daddy's Girl... in the end your father will win out over all in you that is intangible. Whatever makes up your soul, it will rise as it was intended to... you may even surpass your father in heaven. I would not be surprised, then again... I don't believe he exists, either. A part of you will go to your fathers... meeting the one you knew in life as Ahab and the one you worshiped without personally knowing since childhood and knew by the name of God.

I could not deny your mother her part of you, though. You love the sea as you love your God. I know that you would want to spend eternity with both, a tribute to your father Ahab's legacy as well as a last bow to the greater secrets of the deep of which you hold in awe. Never, even in death, could you turn your back on the sea.

When your body is but a shell of what you once were, and when your compassionate heart beats no more, I shall give to your mother of the ocean depths all that someone as meager as me could offer.

I will give her the body you wore so well in life.

When your lungs have taken their last gasp, I shall cast you breathless to sea. In a maritime burial fit for a captain on the high seas, I will lay you to rest in the watery haven wherein you dreamed of so fondly, wishing you could only glimpse of her darker mysteries.

When your eyes see no more, and when your heart has stopped beating... when all that you are is gone, when your lungs cease moving, I shall cast you breathless to sea.

With love and care, I shall cast you breathless to sea.

END


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